the poet's junkyard

This sign was on I-480 just down the street from my parents' house. I must have been a morbid kid because once I figured out it wasn't for a real amusement park, I still thought it was really cool, even if some of the lights had burned out or been shot out.

The sign pointed not to a nuclear playground of doom but a junkyard where a couple guys from my parents' church worked and where the local poets once read their works at night under the neon among the rusting cars. Sometimes I feel like I was born too late and missed out on so much. I want to make a pilgrimage someday to this place I drive by more than weekly.


The sign is gone, and its creator now resides in New York City. I hope against hope that it returns to where it once was.

book of hours

While a wee lass, yours truly's parents had friends who were of similar interest and persuasion, the wives discussed literature and life, the men argued about theology and politics in a way that made me realize at an early age that one could share camaraderie with people with whom one disagrees provided there is mutual respect and understanding.

They moved to California and before their departure, bequeathed an assortment of dusky Persian carpets, King Crimson and Ravi Shankar records, and art books to us, including a beautiful edition of the Duke of Berry's Book of Hours.

While reproductions are not quite as luminous as the real thing, I'm glad to live in a time when such things are not the purview of the very rich, for in prior eons, the Peonage had no access to any of the benefits of literacy, much less pages colored with crushed lapis lazuli and gold leaf.